The company had been teasing the project since late last year and promised completion by the National Rifle Association’s annual convention, which was held last weekend in Louisville.

3

“Craftsman and meteorite collectors have long-prized the Gibeon meteorite for the beauty of its Widmanstatten crystalline pattern,” said Rob Bianchin, Cabot’s founder and president in a statement. “Luxury goods companies have used it to make watch faces, jewelry and other artistic objects. This is the first time anyone’s ever made a functioning mechanical device out of the material.”

4

The company was quick to point out the challenges of working with a meteorite. “No small feat from a metallurgy standpoint. The material lacks perfect uniformity, not to mention the hundreds of tiny extra-terrestrial inclusions blasted into the Gibeon meteorite’s interior during its journey to Earth.”

5

Cabot said each component was laboriously planned, tested and painstakingly cut to incorporate both the exterior bark (regmaglypts) and interior of the meteorite as design elements. Designers used X-ray photography, 3-D modeling, CAD-CAM design, aerospace construction techniques, electron-beam technology, and endless hours of careful craftsmanship to create two matching pistols.

6

Cabot said the guns feature a Widmanstatten pattern, which is a reference to the various states that can be drawn from this rarest of material. A Widmanstatten was developed by the very slow cooling of the planetesimal core at a rate of a few degrees per million years.

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“Drawing out the Widmanstatten from the material through acid etching is an art itself,” said Michael Hebor, Cabot chief operating officer and lead engineer. “It has a will of it’s own.”

8

The result is an aesthetic tour-de-force — from the prized Widmanstetten pattern adorning both major and minor surfaces to the high-polish grips and judicious use of the meteor’s “bark” on the trigger face and grips. And yes, the guns work.

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“We test-fired both guns at our Indiana facility,” Bianchin reveals. “It was even more nerve-racking than the first time we cut through the meteor. But they shot.Everything worked exactly as it should.”

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What is price for perfection? “We’re listing them at $4.5 million, which is the current record for the most expensive firearms ever sold.Worth every penny,” Bianchin said.